


tantalos

by xsprinkledheart



Category: Ib (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 05:42:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20286325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xsprinkledheart/pseuds/xsprinkledheart
Summary: Mary wants to be real.





	tantalos

She has seen flashes of the world beyond the gallery before.

She knows that there is more beyond the dark, finite halls of here. There is a world beyond the paintings that can peel themselves off the walls, the scraggly little dolls that lurk in the room’s shadowed corners. That’s the world her father was from before he disappeared - Mary knows he’s not her father, but she calls him that because it feels like enough. He’s been away for a long time, though.

She has the sketchbook area with her grandfather clock and stuffed rabbit. But they’re scribbly copycats drawn in neon crayons and pencils, flat and out of proportion and all pale in comparison to what the world beyond might be like. They aren’t the real thing.

_ I’m real. Right? _

Mary knows it’s not true. But she looks like a little girl would, she tells herself: Blonde hair and blue eyes and green dress probably like dozens of girls in the world beyond. She talks and acts and walks like a real girl. But she isn’t real.

Every time she’s tried to leave on her own, it’s like the walls of the gallery close in on her. It is almost as if they - she does not know who “they” are - don’t  _ want  _ Mary to leave.

So she stays. She stays to read the same books and talk to the same mannequins and painted ladies, and the clock still ticks on.

She wants to be real, wants to know what it’s like to be real. But that is something Mary will never have.

**Author's Note:**

> oof. not feeling well.


End file.
